@pugbutter @NuttsnBolts I am of "the best words (often in the best order)" school of thought. I love fancy, flowery words and a poetic flair in their use. At the same time, I will also choose my words with an eye for overall tone, especially when employing a given character's point of view. My child characters are prone to thinking that mommy said this, and daddy always would do that, and more likely to have run-on sentences in their narration. Concepts are simplified, as is word choice. Wyth the moorcat, while probably not entirely a simple animal, will call any metal blade a knife, if not simply a sharp metal stick. He doesn't generally think in names: the girl he looks after is simply "his girl", and then other people are identified by characteristics and in their relationships to cat and child. The man his girl trusts, the funny-smelling lady, the bad men trying to hurt his girl, the bad children that made her cry. My adrenaline-junkie trickster gets excited, intense narrative, a minor noble in the Victorian/Edwardian Era will feel a bit more formal. When speaking for myself, I am all over the place, and I have a habit of absorbing mannerisms from those around me, so I'm constantly shifting, depending on who I'm interacting with and what I've been reading.
So in the end, words are very important, but "best" doesn't always mean "most precise or concise" but instead "the words that best create the effect I need". For the specific example of reducing a body to ashes vs. incinerating, I actually get a different impression. The incinerate is far hotter, and probably swifter. But reducing to ashes feels more threatening, even though incineration is more powerful. Bringing in the idea of unsophisticated perspectives, a child might just say "burned". Or even "set on fire".
@Gowi We've discussed this before, but I never feel the horse is completely dead. However I will respectfully disagree with your friend. While yes, in many cases multiple paragraphs are needed to cover everything, there are times when far less is significantly more. For example, particularly in 1x1 rp (and it's my instinct in groups, though I don't usually /get/ to, because of the way posting works and when people are around), if there feels like there should be a break for someone to answer a question, or respond to a statement, or react to an action -- particularly if the other character's response will change the path of the narrative -- I like to take a break and flip it off to the other player. Likewise I will tend to ask "okay, so this and this happens, would your character do A, B, or something else entirely" so that I am able to write beyond that point and stay true to the course of events. It's even /more/ fun in a conversation, because you don't have one person say ten things and then the second person reply to each of the ten things in turn. You say one or two, and then the other person responds and says one or two themselves, and so on. A shortcoming of forum rp is that all too often conversations end up feeling like a bunch parallel conversations happening at the same time between the same characters, because the first point is still being discussed, and the fourth, and seven through ten. There's almost always something more to say about anything, and it messes with narrative flow to have the early points keep going when later ones have already been brought up. It's doable, and I don't mind it too much, but I always notice it happening and it's far /far/ more often on forums than in verbal discourse.
